FayObserver.com: Tuesday hearing in Fayetteville case is first under Racial Justice Act

“Marcus Reymond Robinson killed a teen in a robbery in 1991 and was sentenced to death in 1994.

Still on death row 17 years after his conviction, Robinson is scheduled today to be the first condemned inmate in North Carolina to present statistical evidence of racism per the new Racial Justice Act to convert his sentence to life without parole.

Marcus Robinson

“It’s an historical hearing,” said Ken Rose, senior staff attorney at the N.C. Center for Death Penalty Litigation. “This hearing will be about the prosecutors in Cumberland County, the prosecutors in the judicial division that Cumberland County is a part , and the prosecutors across the state. And it will be about their use of strikes in a disproportionate way to exclude African-American jurors from service.”